Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria Read Online Free PDF

perhaps even more so. His young daughters normally rode
     a bus to school, but I had a sneaking suspicion he’d driven them to school that morning
     himself.
    We made our way through the security line on the first floor, took the stairs up one
     flight, and continued down the hall, checking the nameplates on the doors. We found
     the name we were looking for on the third door on the left.
    Chung Wang.
    Eddie rapped twice on the door, opening it when a male voice from within called out,
     inviting us to enter.
    The office was small, white, and windowless, lit by a rectangular fluorescent fixture
     on the ceiling. The walls were lined with gray filing cabinets, which, judging from
     the stacks of files on top of them, were insufficient to hold Wang’s workload. He
     stood from his seat behind his desk and extended his hand over yet another pile of
     files on his desk.
    “Special Agent Tara Holloway,” I said, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.
    Wang had the typical Chinese build, slightly shorter than average, lean but wiry.
     He appeared to be around thirty years of age, no gray yet in his short black hair.
     He wore a standard white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Working
     hard, no doubt.
    Eddie took Wang’s hand next.
    A knock sounded behind us, the fourth of our party, the agent from the CIA, having
     arrived. Eddie and I stepped aside to allow him in.
    Like Chung Wang, this agent had black hair, brown skin, and appeared to be in his
     early thirties. He wore wire-framed glasses and an argyle sweater-vest in green and
     blue over a short-sleeved white cotton shirt. He looked like a Persian Urkel. I mentally
     dubbed him Perkel.
    “Azad Zardooz,” the guy said, extending his hand and stepping forward.
    So not Perkel, then.
    I shook his hand and glanced around at the dark-haired, dark-skinned men. “Wow, I
     feel awfully—”
    “Pale?” Eddie provided, shooting me a look.
    He’d hit the nail on the head, but once he’d put it out in the open I realized how
     politically incorrect it sounded, even if there was no malicious intent behind it.
     I decided to go with “female” instead.
    “Don’t worry,” Zardooz assured me as he shook Eddie’s hand next. “This isn’t a boys’
     club.”
    I raised a fist in celebration. “Hooray for ovaries!”
    His brows drew together. He looked at Eddie. “Is she always like this?”
    “Twenty-four-seven,” Eddie said. “She’s the most embarrassing partner I’ve ever had.”
    “Maybe so.” I pointed a finger in his face. “But I’m the best with a gun.”
    Eddie lifted his chin in acquiescence. “I have to give you that.”
    Agent Wang invited us to take seats around his desk and handed each of us a second
     file, this one far thicker and heavier than the initial file we’d been provided. I
     looked inside and found copies of bank statements, credit card bills, check registers,
     ATM receipts, and other miscellaneous financial information, including a pay stub
     from a small biotech company and another from Texas Instruments, one of the area’s
     major employers. There was even a grocery store receipt that included Oreo cookies.
    “I’ve been through all the documentation,” Wang said, “and it led me nowhere. These
     guys operate primarily on a cash basis. You’ll notice that several large withdrawals
     were made from their accounts each month, but there was nothing to tell me how they
     got that money out of the country.”
    Agent Wang was intelligent and well trained, too, so I wasn’t sure whether Eddie and
     I would have any more luck than he had. But it never hurt to have a fresh set of eyes
     look things over.
    Zardooz glanced at his watch. “I’d like to give you two some background on the men
     involved. How about we discuss this further over lunch?”
    “Sure,” Eddie said.
    “Works for me,” Wang said, standing from his chair.
    “Any suggestions?” Zardooz asked.
    The men turned to me. As I looked at Azad